Slashdot Mirror
Automagic No-Fly-Zone Enforcement
An anonymous reader writes "SoftWalls is the name of an aviation project at UC-Berkeley that's developing a system for commercial airliners that establishes and enforces no-fly zones. Basically, through GPS, if a plane begins to enter a no-fly zone (eg, around a mountain, or over Lower Manhattan), an alarm goes off in the cockpit. If ignored, the system actively removes control of the plane away from the pilot and co-pilot to steer the plane out of the no-fly zone. The technology is intended as both an accident prevention technique and a deterrent to terrorists planning to ram a building. ABCNews recently profiled the project (with video) and also rode along with a working prototype built by Honeywell that successfully kept a Beechcraft from hitting a mountain."
Few days ago we had a story about the most irritating language in English. Didn't take it seriously because "automagically" wasn't on the list. My all time #1 irritant. It's just a cute way of saying "automatically". Cute language has its uses: it can amuse, satirize, and extend meaning. But this stupid word embodies cuteness for its own sake.
When you can find a way to do it remotely !
"Turn 50 degrees east-north-east... you're about to hit another plane!"
"...I can't"
"Sure you can, just turn!"
"NO... I physically CAN'T, the plane won't let me."
BAM.
Taking the control out of the pilots hands is a bad thing.
-Christopher Wu
http://www.christopherwu.net/
Why wasn't this been implemented before? I don't care a rat arse about terrorists this and terrorists that, but I have lost a few friends in airplane crashes. With these technologies available at least a decade ago (this project is an implementation of a few old technologies) why isn't this a major requirement for all new planes?
A lot of lives would have been saved if a plane would have at least a small database of known mountains in the flight path. Why don't our planes avoid mountains automatically?
Life isn't like a box of chocolates. It's more like a jar of jalapenos. What you do today, might burn your ass tomorrow.
Except removing control of the plane from the pilot is probably not the way to do it.
Setting up some form of fine system would achieve the desired effect without endangering the lives of thousands or millions of people.
>>The technology is intended as both an accident prevention technique and a deterrent to terrorists planning to ram a building
Why do people seem to think that terrorists are just dumb camel jockeys from the middle of the desert who are easily impressed by internal plumbing? If an al Qaeda operative wants to smash a plane into a building, he'll figure out a way to disable such a system.
What happens if I'm on a flight that for whatever the reason HAS to land at La Guardia (low fuel) and cannot navigate AROUND lower Manhattan, but instead wants to go over it. And this system won't let the pilot do that, and by steering around, runs the plane out of fuel and crashes it.
So someone says "Oh, there will be an override for situations like that" -- well, why won't that override get used when someone is bound and detmined to fly a 757 into a tall building? At that point its just another warning system, which is fine, but the computer control part scares me. I like pilots in control when necessary.
Would a catastrophic loss of the GPS system, render these planes unusable? Also, depending on the accuracy of the system(remember they 'skew' the signal for civilian recievers), it could make the planes a bigger target, for the possibly more accurate GPS recievers on them.
This space intentionally left blank.
Everybody's thought about automobile systems that drive for you, and I think most of us suspect it will simply be a matter of time before it happens.
Think about it: Doing a similar system in the air is a great place to learn about how to do this with cars...since asside from takeoff and landing, there's a much bigger tollerance for error in the wide blue skys.
--
Written in the name of sacred jihad
The linux hacker
Terrorists cause planes to crash due to bogus information sent to the GPS, simulating a no fly zone situation, and causing them to crash into buildings.
The FAA has been reported as saying "Yep, it's doing it's job, we couldn't see such a useful feature being exploited".
The FAA is also considering trained monkeies to replace the crew. Passangers, who will be given shock buttons, seems to enjoy this idea... far too much.
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
From the FAQ (warning, PDF).
I hate cutting and pasting from PDF files.
Anyway, the statement Today, that plane would be shot down. to me is a bit absolute... is this really true? IF a pilot had problems, called in said problems to the tower and acted according instructions or his own judgement, would he really get shot down? Additionally, I have a problem accepting that jets would scramble fast enough to be able to do so...
That is unless I guess commercial airlines transmit on L1 & L2 frequencies. Provided of course the military sees fit to allow commercial airlines to use that frequency. Which makes me wonder about what juridstiction the United States would have if say a Japan Airlines plane was using that frequency when it pulled in our airspace... Oh well back to work
MoFscker
Currently there are ten (10) TFRs around the US that were enacted soon after 9/11 and/or right before the opening of hostilities against Iraq. There is no need for these TFRs any more, yet the Administration will not instruct the FAA to remove them. The Aircraft Owner's and Pilots Association (AOPA) spends most of their time and money these days fighting the TFRs and ensuring that they are announced with enough lead time so pilots can plan around them and that they are removed in a timely manner. You can read more about it at the AOPA website.
This Administration does not need a technology that would enhance the annoyance they are causing priviate pilots!
The core technologies have been around awhile but I think it's important to remember that GPS technology and fast small CPUs are just now becoming "mature", so it's not out of line that these systems are still in the testing phase. Sure, ten years ago maybe you could build such systems with half of the first class section stuffed with hardware...
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
I actually currently work on another NASA research project that is taking a slightly different approach. Our model is to not only avoid no-fly-zones but other aircraft (using ADSB reports) as well as bad weather (this relies on weather reports from ground stations.)
The big difference between the 2 projects is that ours only gives possible solution to the pilot and then he has to accept the route deviation rather than removing control from the pilot.
I mean realisticly these solution are bleeding edge and wont make it into service for 20 years. Personally I'd like to see more of a grouund based solution but that probably because my background is ATC systems.
To put this into perspective, it used to be that landing at an airport was a pilot's discretion. That is, an air traffic controller could *advise* the pilot not to land, but it was a decision ultimately up to the pilot to make.
I think there are simply too many "what-if" situations that require a pilot have control over the aircraft to allow such critical remote control. What if the jet runs out of fuel? What if the no-flyover beacon directs the jet into other air traffic or really bad weather.
Moreover, what would stop a private citizen from enabling his or her own no-flyover beacon and causing havoc: From terrorists all the way to folks living next to an airport who deal with turbine noise.
A good idea at first, but with reflection seems to cause more problems than it solves.
-Alex
Right now, terrorism of the skies is pretty much restricted to those groups that have a ready supply of people willing to kill themselves for their cause. Remote control airplanes will open the terrorist industry to technical savvy terrorist groups who like to work safely from the ground.
Best of all, remote control airplanes would allow terrorist groups to work in larger numbers. Right now, terrorist groups are pushed to their limits to take over 4 airplanes. In this new system, a terrorist group that hacks the remote control code procedures for the soft walls project might be able to take take down 20 to 30 planes before the airlines are able to ground the fleet.
The current airline security system pretty much exludes those terrorist groups that have people willing to kill for their beliefs, but not willing to die for them. This will be welcome news to any terrorist organization with good hackers.
As for my comfort flying, the fact that I know that someone can take control of the airplane from the pilot will make me just that much more likely to buy one of those airline insurance policies.
Not to be a troll but does anyone else in here hate words like "Automagic"
Why wasn't this been implemented before? I don't care a rat arse about terrorists this and terrorists that, but I have lost a few friends in airplane crashes. With these technologies available at least a decade ago (this project is an implementation of a few old technologies) why isn't this a major requirement for all new planes?
See, if a computer program somehow fucks this up, and ends up flying right towards the mountain instead of away from it, the pilots would realize that this *can't* be right but a computer wouldn't. I'm sure they have lots of *warning* systems, but up until now I don't think anyone has thought that overriding the pilot was a good idea, since up until Sept 11th noone thought anyone would *willingly* crash the plane. Maybe it'd save lives if the pilot had a heart attack and collapsed in his seat, but it's a stretch.
And another thing - sabotage. If you can compromise this program, you suddenly have the power to crash *every* plane in the air - complete with uber-searched passengers, armed guards and top security clearance pilots. While it is a lot less likely, the consequences would almost be far more catastrophic.
And face it - hi-jackers in control of a plane can crash it where it does a *lot* of damage anyway - even if it's not dead-center in the Pentagon. If nothing else, fly as close as you can, cut power to the engines and drop like a living dumbfire fuel bomb. How far could you get on a 30,000 feet drop? I'm guessing quite a bit into the "no-fly" zone...
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
The system being discussed here would take ultimate control of the plane away from the pilot. In the century of powered flight we have just completed, such ideas have have always turned out to be the Wrong Thing.
If we could always trust the flight computers and control systems, we wouldn't even need pilots: today's jetliners are smart enough to fly themselves. The problem is that the systems are just not reliable enough, and the system designers are not prescient enough, to handle every eventuality.
For ages, the question has been A modern corollary might be:
The RAT is the Ram Air Turbine, a propeller driven hydraulic pump tucked under the belly of the 767. The RAT can supply just enough hydraulic pressure to move the control surfaces and enable a dead-stick landing. The loss of both engines caused the RAT to automatically drop into the airstream and begin supplying hydraulic pressure.
The Gimli Glider used this to survive the loss of both engines.
If you don't want to repeat the past, stop living in it.
Uh, yes. The did consider exactly that possibility. They just did it decades ago, when the largest planes were significantly smaller than they are now. I'm pretty sure I remember reading that the towers were designed to handle being crashed into by planes as large as a 727.
Terrorist: ok , if you dont find a way within the next minute to turn it off then we torture this 6year old girl slowly in front of you until you do find a way
Call me a heartless bastard, but I'll take the torture of one 6 year old girl over thousands of deaths and countless little girls tortured for life by the sudden violent slaughter of their parents any day. And that's not even counting the financial disaster, and the country- and world-wide consequences of a voluntary plane crash, such as the paranoia, warmonging and world-peace-threatening attitude of the government of the country that was hit.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
I'm all for a plane avoiding mountains, and taking over when the pilot is incapacitated so the plane doesn't crash -- but I hate seeing articles about new technology being promoted with "it'll stop those nasty terrorists! Woohoo!"
I'm sure the (surviving) terrorists are ROFL at us scrambling to prevent them repeating something they know they'll never repeat. We need to harden our other systems -- water/electric supplies, who's driving the oil/gas tankers/trucks, etc.
I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
And I don't think it will work. This is the kind of system you'd see on an airbus, and probably not a boeing- unless it could be defeated easily, like all the autopilot-type systems boeing installs.
Many others have posted great reasons why taking control away from a pilot is a bad thing, so you can read them- but if it's terrorists you're worried about, they now have much more to fear from the passengers than from a computer system. The stakes couldn't be higher now for airline hijackings, and knowing the stakes, no US group of passengers will allow any hijackers to carry out their mission. (Flight 93) This, incidentally, is a social solution to a social problem.
Sure, this kind of thing would be great for terrain avoidance. But I wouldn't bet my life on it. Between jamming, spoofing, misplaced confidence, programming errors and the like, it can be quite problematic.
Basically, you're swapping your trust in the pilot for your trust in the programmer. Not necessarily a good trade.
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
One has to ask if this idea is truly about safety or about avoiding 9/11. If you have a system in place like this It will have an overide, otherwise you wouldn't have a pilot in the first place. The overide will be easy to implement because first on the list of possible situations it will be needed will be time critical decisions thus a lengthy/dificult invovled overide process will not work.
In the end you can't defend against human decision making unless you remove the human from the process.... which means you used canned human decision making in the form of code which to my knowledge is not and cannot ( to date ) be made self-correcting. Thus if there is an unforseen circumstance for the code to encounter you don't know what will happen. The code can't think on the fly for itself. So choose your poison. A plane that will be consistently flown even if that consistency invovles a bug that flys into the ground given the proper circumstances or a pilot that can think for itself and do unthinkable things such as fly into a huge skyscraper, or come up with an inovative way to control a plane with differential thrust due to the failure of control surface hydraulics ( actual real world example ). In fact both of those examples are being subjected to CODE fixes for making such actions easier or more difficult, this being an example of 9/11 ( or mountain ) avoidence and the new implementation of a backup directional control system utilizing dissimilar engine thrust rates. But its impossible to account for all scenarios and untill code can be sufficiently capable to deal with unforseen circumstances you have an overide. You draw your own conclusions on what a pilot will decide to trust in an odd situation when presented with loss of control of the aircraft. If your response to that is not to allow that decision then why the hell do you have a pilot in the cockpit to begin with ?
I don't ask you to be me. I only ask you not expect me to be you.
Yes, but your example is a poor one. Pilots have a multitude of options at their disposal for avoiding collisions. Altitude changes(up OR down! Wow!), heading changes(left OR right!) and speed changes(faster OR slower!)
The real problem is that in almost every plane with an autopilot, there's a Big Red Switch the pilot can press. When I saw this in action, it was on a small(4 seater) single, and pressing the switch caused about 2-3 switches to solidly trip to the off position(think like a circuit breaker) and a loud warning tone. It completely cut the autopilot's control over the plane, and not by software- hardware. Furthermore, guess what's part of the checklist? Setting the autopilot while on the ground, making sure it can manipulate control surfaces cleanly in all directions, and then pressing the Big Red Switch and verifying the AP is dead.
The problem will not, I predict, come from legitimate restricted airspace; restricted airspace is often near legitimate popular routes, but not to the point of concern(and most restricted airspace has ceilings, rarely is airspace restricted to the ceiling airliners cruise at). The problem will come in the following forms:
Please help metamoderate.
Others have already pointed out that people did design the towers to withstand a plane impact--- but, aside from the sizes of aircraft getting bigger of the years, fuel capacity has increased as well. It seems like the speculation has been that most of the significant structural failure of the WTC towers actually resulted from the intense heat of the fuel fires, not impact.
"I think it's both hilarious and sad that we're still focusing on terrorists wrt airplanes. They had their chance, and they used it to their great advantage. They'll come at us from a different angle now, knowing that they'll never again surprise us in that particular way."
First sane thought I've seen in this thread.
Over many years we had trained ourselves to cooperate with airplane hijackers and wait to see what they wanted. The 9/11 terrorists knew this and used it against us.
They won't do it again, because they know that every person on the plane will try and rip their throats out.
They'll watch, see what we aren't paying attention to, and use that next time. Bad news for us - we cannot pay attention to everything.
A.
...bringing you cynical quips since 1998
This is pretty meaningless for airline since they're talking to ATC almost 100% of the time and may get warnings/updates via many other channels. Whereas a GA pilot flying a little 152--or more to the point--a Lancair PropJet (350+ kt cruise), may be happily flying VFR and suddenly find two F-16's on his wing because he busted a "pop-up" TFR... We need a system of communication and coordnation among ALL aircraft.
You make a good point, but I think you (and others) might be polarizing the issue more than necessary.
I can imagine this being implemented as a restriction of options rather than prescriptive flight path. As you mention, pilots already deal with a myriad of decision factors, and this would act as another. If you need to put your 747 into an Immelmann or Split-S, just make sure you're not doing it into a mountain -- because the computer won't let you. The computer won't dictate what you have to do, just what you can't.
We see these restrictions all around us. Water drums near highway barriers. Curbs on sidewalks. Large rocks surrounding bridge supports. Pilots are just beginning to benefit from the fact that these influences can be virtual.
It all goes downhill from first post
I agree with the others replying to this post in that there would be no doubt that the plane could be destroyed if desired, and little doubt that it would.
However, something I'd like to check - I Am Not An American - isn't the White House kinda surrounded by Washington and lots of people (in a general kind of way). Where do you shoot it down that doesn't do more damage to the surrounding populace? Not all plane crashes end like Con Air.
GPS Spoofing Countermeasures, Jon S. Warner, Roger G. Johnston -- Los Alamos National Labs
MoFscker
What's to stop terrorists for distorting the GPS signals and making the plane think that a mountain isn't where the mountain is? And if the terrorist can broadcast multiple spoof signals (spoofing a constellation), they could steer a plane to any location by simply moving the no-fly barrier to herd the plane to the desired (but undesirable) location.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
Imagine if you could extend this idea to the whole US industrial military complex, and prevent them from invading defenseless countries without provocation. Now that would reduce the number of terrorist attacks.
I can't believe people would be soo strong to propose fully computer-controlled airplanes, without manual override, while most of our nations metro systems have drivers.
The factors that affect flight (I'm a private pilot pp-asel) are soo diverse and include decision making far more complex than "should I turn here to avoid airspace xyz". In an emergency - say an engine failure, oil leak, etc, pilots *are* allowed to violate any airspace restriction to avoid injury / deaths. Here are the federal regulations that are pertinent:
FAR = "federal aviation regulations" which comprise section 14 of the Federal Law Registry.
FARs part 91 = General Operating and Flight Rules
* general (non commercial) aviation falls under part 91.
FAR 91.3b = "In an in-flight emergency requiring immediate action, the pilot in command may deviate from any rule of this part to the extent required to meet that emergency".
Far 91.141 restricts flight in the vicinity of the president and president's related parties. It is clearly in part 91, and can be deviated from in an emergency.
My flight instructor had a partial engine failure in a twin engine aircraft during training at Oakland - and dealing with the emergency required flying below a the legal 1000' altitude above populated areas. In fact he flew at 500' in the pattern which is below the "500' from people or property rule". If the plane attempted to climb on a partially failed engine, they would have likely crashed and all (3 aboard) perished.
There are 1000s of anecdotes, but feel free to go over to rec.aviation.piloting or r.a.student to read more. Having computers override pilots is a very bad idea - in the minds of virtually all actual pilots.
The likelyhood of true disasters coming from airplanes that take control from pilots is pretty high in my book. The likelyhood of armed terrorists being able to disable such a system also seems pretty high... ever heard of a wire-cutter? How about a gps jammer?
Final note: GPS is not perfect! I've flown two different C172s with Garmin 430 and 530 equipment, and both misplaced class-B (the only airspace below 18000' requiring a clearance to enter) airspaces by several nautical miles. If such gps ever misplaced a mountaintop, or the plane's position by even a couple of miles, it could forcebly cause a crash under near-ideal conditions.
Ideally, they should build the technology into the hardware of the planes themselves, retrofitting were necessary.
;-)
They do this already... I think they call it a pilot.
John J. Nance has a new fiction book called Skyhook ( ISBN 0-515-13712-X ) that I am currently reading about "a top-secret computer program designed to save planes in trouble."
Amazing that fiction gets closer to reality in increasing shorter time spans isn't it.
Best
TG
If you need to put your 747 into an Immelmann or Split-S, just make sure you're not doing it into a mountain -- because the computer won't let you.
Fly by wire already does this. The aircraft is actually controlled by the computer. The pilot says 'turn left 10 deg'. The computer actually figures out how far to move the control surfaces, depending on alt, weight, speed, etc. It will not send the a/c into an Immelman.
Fighter aircraft are limited by the FCC in the same way. Limited to a specific turn or G rate depending on the load. An F-16 with 2 ea 2,000 lb bombs on the wing will not turn as hard as an F-16 with only missiles. No matter how hard the pilot wants it to.
After reading some (not all) of the posts I'm thinking that it might be a good idea to think about this a bit.
1. Letting autonomous systems take control has some very very important repercussions.
2. Irrespective of those repercussions it's going to happen more and more throughout our society. The longterm advantages are just too useful.
Some interesting scenario's....
Perhaps a software update that enforces no-fly zones in such a way as to force the automatic systems to crash the plane where it's wanted.
Perhaps a device that transmits to the flight controls information that results in the previous example.
Perhaps an external device that can disrupt or worse, control the onboard systems.
Of course, some such dangers are inherient in any fly by wire system. So a balance between the degree of dificulty in compromising such and the increased accuracy, redundancy, and control that fly by wire allows must be made.
Of course having systems that can't be overridden by the "pilot" (legit or otherwise) on site has it's own dangers. A massive software glitch in the systems that may autonomous control... BAD. A purposeful version of such a glitch. And any other outside interferience.
Ward
. Silence! Be thankful thy species is unpalatable! .
OK, so the software can turn away a jet travelling 500 mph once it gets into a 1 mile radius of a certain metro area. Will that stop a 747 that's diving from 35000 feet at a 85 degrees down? If the pilot has final authority to push the jet into such a dive, I'm thinking there's not much the software will be able to do once it kicks in automatically. Maybe it'll attempt to pull out, which means the terrorists aim a little lower than their intended target...
-- If god wanted me to have a sig, he'd have given me a sense of humor.